CHAPDISC: DH35, KING'S CROSS

[BRUCE WILSON]

No: HPFGUIDX 185162

I would say that the experience was both in Harry's head and a "real" portal to the afterlife.  Harry perceived it as a railway station, specifically King's Cross, because that was the metaphor/simile/allegory which his mind siezed on; someone else might perceive it differently.

Anent the "baby", the verb Dumbledore used is significant.  We CAN do nothing.  Not we MAY or MIGHT or SHOULD or MUST, but CAN--that is, it is not possible for us to do anything.

CS Lewis discusses this in several of his essays, and works it out story wise in "The Great Divorce."   Every moral choice we make--and I am oversimplifying it--either makes us more compassionate, more generous, more merciful, more just, and in short brings us closer to God---or the reverse.  We are each on the way to becoming a glorious angelic being, or a demonic monster.  Some great saints go onward and upward, while some great sinners keep rejecting the good for so long that it becomes an engaged habit--to the point where they have forgotten that anything else is even possible.  Most of us are somewhere in between, taking three steps forward, two back.

BAW